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Driver in crash sentenced to 20 years

The woman who lost her unborn daughter in a Nov. 6, 2007, car crash told the driver of the other vehicle that she had forgiven him.

Those were words that 26-year-old Logan Lage had waited two years to hear.

“I want you to know I feel terrible for what I did,” Lage told Shea Lehnen during his sentencing hearing in court Friday morning.

A funeral for baby Lileigh Lehnen was all the time the Lehnen family had to share with their baby.

Shea Lehnen was 8 1/2 months pregnant at the time of the crash, which Lage caused while fleeing a Colorado State Patrol trooper on Colorado Highway 65. Lage drove his Jeep head-on into a minivan operated by Shea Lehnen.

Lehnen’s baby was delivered via emergency Caesarean section but died within hours.

Lage was sentenced to 20 years in prison Friday by Mesa County District Judge Richard Gurley after he pleaded guilty Oct. 6 to child abuse resulting in the death of Lileigh Lehnen, second-degree assault and misdemeanor child abuse.

Lage will serve his prison term concurrently with three years of prison he’s serving for a probation violation on a drug possession case.

Lage was running from police because his driver’s license was not current.

The case set a precedent in Colorado law, Chief Deputy District Attorney Tammy Eret said. It was the first of its kind to charge a defendant who kills an unborn child by vehicular homicide with the charge of child abuse resulting in death, a class 2 felony.

Lehnen’s family said they wanted justice for Lileigh and they feel they got it, Eret said.

Prosecutors initially charged Lage with first-degee murder, but it was rejected by Gurley.

The Colorado Court of Appeals in May upheld Gurley’s decision last year to dismiss the murder charge.